Re: Scoping Comments — Wild Horse and Burro Programmatic Environmental Assessment for Gathers, Removals, and Population Growth Suppression Methods

1. This program is significant and warrants an EIS, not an EA.
BLM proposes a national framework affecting roughly 85,466 wild horses and burros across 175 Herd Management Areas and 25.6 million acres, with the stated aim of reaching a national AML of approximately 25,592. The removal of tens of thousands of federally protected animals across millions of acres is a major federal action significantly affecting the human environment. I urge BLM to prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement. A 75-page Environmental Assessment, with the substantive analysis relocated to a national tier, cannot lawfully shrink a program of this magnitude below the EIS threshold.

2. The PEA must not become a shortcut around site-specific analysis.
I am concerned this PEA is designed to let future gather decisions rely on national "approved methods" while skipping the on-the-ground analysis BLM's own policy requires. The PEA must expressly state that it does not authorize any removal and does not relieve any field office of the obligation, before any gather, to:

3. BLM must disclose all AML and boundary data and methods.
The majority of AMLs and HMA boundaries were established through historic agreements rather than the monitoring data the handbook requires. The PEA must not carry these undocumented figures forward as valid. For every AML and boundary BLM intends to rely upon, BLM should disclose the underlying data, the date it was collected, and the methodology used. Where that data does not exist or is stale, BLM must say so, and a current data-based analysis must be completed before any removal.

4. The range of alternatives is too narrow.
The three alternatives presented do not include a genuine minimal-removal / fertility-control-primary alternative, nor any alternative that addresses livestock forage allocation (AUMs) as a means of achieving a thriving natural ecological balance. A reasonable range of alternatives must include these. The purpose and need should not be written so narrowly that it forecloses them.

5. The TNEB and AML framing presumes its own conclusion.
The purpose and need treats wild horses and burros as the cause of range degradation while excluding any analysis of permitted livestock's contribution to that same degradation. A genuine "thriving natural ecological balance" and "multiple-use" analysis must account for all uses, including livestock grazing, in any cumulative-effects analysis.

6. This PEA cannot formalize CAWP welfare standards.
The Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program gather standards have never been reviewed, published for public comment, or finalized as enforceable rules; FOIA records confirm only the cover memorandum (IM 2021-002) was ever formally adopted. This PEA is an environmental-effects analysis, not a rulemaking. BLM must not reference welfare "standards" in this document as if they were binding, and this PEA must not be used as a substitute for the long-overdue formalization of enforceable, science-based welfare standards.

         7. Any EA must analyze the impact of fertility control on foaling season time-zone to comply with the prohibition against helicopter capture. 

8. ESA and NHPA effects cannot be resolved at the national level.
Endangered Species Act Section 7 consultation and National Historic Preservation Act Section 106 consultation must be conducted in the site-specific tiered reviews and cannot be discharged programmatically.

9. Please define the limits of tiering.
The PEA should clearly identify which site-specific factors must trigger full, independent second-tier analysis, so that the document cannot be used to truncate the local hard look that NEPA and BLM policy require.

10. Please hold a public scoping meeting.
Consistent with prior national planning efforts, I request that BLM hold a public scoping meeting to clarify the purpose and need and answer the public's questions before the comment period closes.

Thank you for considering these comments.